crawl into your shadow
by the milliner's rook
Summary: AU. There's a witch in this sleepy little village now that goes by the name of Karin, but nothing has changed since she's arrived. Not really.


Prompt: folklore, witches, Harvest Moon.

* * *

It's midday when she arrives.

Sun in his eyes, Toushirou looks up, squinting. Sweat sticks to his back, an ear of wheat in his mouth, and with a deep sigh, he stops farming, his hands sore and blistering. For a moment, he digs his spade into the ground, and watches the wagon pass.

There, a girl sits, chatting merrily and laughing with the wagon driver.

There's something odd about her, he thinks, even then, as a gentle puff of air ripples through her long black hair. He can tell that she's a strange one. He just doesn't know how.

But she doesn't notice him, too caught up in conversation with the wagon driver.

* * *

It doesn't take long for the news to spread. It spreads like wildfire.

Questions are asked. Rumours are born. Gossip breeds and transforms, the grapevine growing. There's someone new in their quaint little village, and it seems like she's here to stay.

Toushirou sighs, and continues his work.

* * *

"She's a witch!" Momo tells him excitedly, grinning the next afternoon, and tossing him fresh red apples, as she settles down in the shade for lunch, and as the dutiful best friend, he joins her. "Can you believe it?"

"Should we burn her?" Toushirou asks dryly. "Grab the pitchforks while we still have the chance?"

"Don't be silly!" Momo says, folding her arms across her chest. "Those things are outdated. Go say hello."

"But who will take care of the vegetables?" He asks seriously, before Momo throws her hands up in the air. "Someone has to water the potatoes."

"You're never going to win farmer of the year with an attitude like _that_." Momo tells him matter-of-fact. That's what _she_ thinks. Socializing had nothing to do with it, Toushirou knew, all that really mattered was excellent crops.

"So, how do you know she's a witch?" Toushirou changes the subject, taking a bite of the apple.

"Renji-kun saw her flying earlier." Leaning in conspiratorially, Momo lowers her voice into a whisper. Toushirou is used to her dramatics, enjoys them sometimes, even, ignores them mostly. Half of them aren't true, he's certain, but then a little white lie can make this peaceful life he lives a little bit more exciting, and no harm is done, since the gossip Momo spreads is never malicious. It's more mischievous than anything. And it keeps the other villagers on their toes, though he's certain they don't take Momo's rumours too seriously either. "Then Izuru-kun saw them flying together."

"Really." Toushirou murmurs, absentmindedly. That was interesting, he supposed, mulling over yesterday's entrance. If she can fly, then why did she come in by wagon?

She was definitely odd.

* * *

She goes by the name of Karin.

Momo tells him that she's a nice person and makes potions that can make napkins turn into butterflies. She's also really good at pumpkin soup. Witchcraft runs through the family, and she misses having a cat. Apparently she forgot to take one with her.

"How do you know these things?" He asks, eventually, taking a bite out of the bread she made.

"She works at my shop." Momo grins. "But what she really wants to do is to make a rainbow."

He doesn't care that much about rainbows, but he could do with some rain.

* * *

He sees her flying from time to time. He looks up, pushing back his straw hat, chewing on his ear of wheat, and there she is – drifting on the cloudless blue sky. Sometimes she waves at him. Sometimes there are children. Sometimes there are packages. There are never black cats.

He also sees her crashing into trees a lot.

* * *

"You're not a very good witch, are you?"

It's not meant to be the first thing he says to her, but there have been so many accidents lately, that he figures it is a good conversation starter as any.

"I'm not a good flyer, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad witch." She corrects with a smile, hardly batting an eye. If anything, she looks more delighted, teeth sharp and carved and wolfishly mischievous. "You haven't seen my magic tricks."

He shrugs, knowing a trap when he sees one, and accepts her invitation anyway. "Alright." Toushirou concedes. "Tell me about them."

"I turned my brother into a toad once." Karin tells him proudly, smiling ruefully.

He looks at her intently, and figures she's probably telling the truth. What he can't understand is how that was a good thing. Or anything but an accident. "Okay…" He says slowly, uncertain if he should ask.

"It got the girl of his dreams to kiss him." She shrugs, as if that was the end of that.

"Ah." Toushirou comments, dry as he can be. Now he knows her type. "So you're a meddler."

"Only for those who _really_ need it." Karin rolls her eyes, and just _looks _at him, like she's seconds away from laughing at him. There's too much amusement on her face, from the glitter in her eyes to the soft curve of her cheek, dimples dancing at the slightly hint of a smile. "And only family get that treatment." Her grin widens. "Well, no. Just my idiot brother."

"So you'll leave the trees alone?" Toushirou folds his arms across his chest, forgetting that tonight he was buying strawberries for Momo. Tonight they were making shortcake.

"I didn't say that." She grins, stepping forward, and the amusement increases tenfold, unfurling over her face in a haze of pink warmth.

"Because you're very distracting." He tells her, grumbling with his trademark frown. Momo says that when he tries to frown he's actually pouting, but that's not true. Honestly, when he thinks about the trees, he gets slightly cross. Those trees didn't do anything. But time and time again, the amount of times he sees Renji running across the fields with a ladder is getting _ridiculous._

"Really?" Karin looks delighted, and there's peppermint in the air now, Toushirou can smell it clearly, He's certain that it wasn't there before. "That, I can fix."

* * *

Karin laughs later, when she pulls the hay out of his hair, twining her fingers around his slightly-too-wavy-hair.

She likes to laugh, he learns, as his thumb brushes her hips, and she shakes against him, the scent of her skin sweet and heady and pressing into the palm of his hand. She sinks her teeth into his collarbone and tends to it with a kiss, hooking his calves with her ankles, pushing herself closer until there's no more space between them. She bubbles with laughter, and somehow it's the sensation of ebullient magic that buzzes in the air and traces his skin that pushes him over the edge.

"This was fun." She grins, and he wonders if he's just been enchanted, before she shakes her ebony hair and the thought disappears because it's so absurd and impossible, then she combs out the hay with her fingers. Toushirou helps her find her clothes, scattered across the barn. Her hair is dishevelled and messy, but still, it's a good look on her. "Want to do it again sometime?"

"Okay," Toushirou agrees, and feels her smile against his mouth, a distraction that he doesn't mind so much.

* * *

Life goes on.

Karin keeps crashing into trees.

She also crashes into Toushirou's usual lunch with Momo.

And the tumbling in the barn still happen.

* * *

Once Momo knows, and she knows instantly, it doesn't take the rest of the village to find out.

* * *

Renji finds it hilarious. It makes him even more intolerable than before, and even then, Toushirou had little patience for him.

"Do you want matching hats?" He asks, obnoxious and succeeding spectacularly at making Toushirou's cheeks burn.

He hates that Renji is in charge of milk.

If he can get his own cow, he's certain he can avoid all this embarrassment. It's the teasing that he can't stand. It's the teasing that everyone else likes.

"Farmers wear straw hats," Toushirou sourly states, glancing to the side rather than meeting Renji's too-big-for-his-face smirk. It makes his disdain more believable this way. "Witches wear black hats."

The sad thing is, Karin doesn't wear pointy black hats at all.

* * *

It makes Karin laugh, when she hears how much she fails to live up to the folklore.

"I never said I was conventional." She grins, stretching like a cat, and there's the scent of peppermint in the air again. "Does it really bother you?"

"Maybe. A little bit." Toushirou admits, shrugging. He likes her just the way she is, but at the same time, he wishes that she'd have some of the traits that made her recognizably a witch, in spite of everything. "Not as much as it used to."

She looks at him, head cocked to the side, and she looks amused, more than anything. "I could turn nasty if you like? Eat all the children up and never look back."

His brows furrow. "That's not what I meant."

"I know." Her bare shoulders rise and fall, and she can't help but bare her teeth at him. "Well, I'll figure something out."

* * *

The sky turns green for a week. It stretches out into the horizon, and makes the clouds look even stranger than before. The sunsets are purple. Eventually, it fades away, and life returns back to normal.

Karin can't figure out what went wrong.

* * *

A cat, Toushirou laments, would probably solve all her problems.

But then a cat, Toushirou realizes with dismay, would probably ruin his vegetable garden. Not to mention the flowers that he's beginning to grow outside his windows. He pales at the thought. He doesn't want _that._

But then, Toushirou thinks of all the stories he's heard about, and decides that perhaps it won't be so bad, if the cat can learn to _talk_ and _swim. _And that way his fears will be avoided.

He has always wanted to see a swimming witch's cat.

* * *

"I should take you flying one day." Karin muses, as she looks down on him, her legs swinging back and forth. "I think you'd like it."

"I thought we established that you aren't a good flyer." Toushirou states with an impassive face as they wait for Shuuhei to come running back with the ladder. He holds her broom in hand, silently curious to how she always manages to keep it in such good condition when she has so many successful accidents crashing into trees.

"I didn't say _right now._" Karin replies instantly, and privately, Toushirou thinks, she would sound more convincing if she wasn't so indignant.

"So when you successfully create a rainbow?" Toushirou asks, wry.

"Perhaps." Karin agrees easily, and Toushirou realizes too late that he walked into that all by himself. "Is that a promise?"

"We'll see." Toushirou sighs, and sits down to wait just as he sees the silhouette of a ladder in the distance.

* * *

"Love potions? I can't make those for the life of me." Karin sighs, grimacing slightly as Momo asks her, still swooning from the latest book she's read at the library. "My sister is really good at them though."

"_Oh."_ Momo turns to look at both at them, glancing slowly, and then an even more delighted expression flickers on her face, and she points at them, flailing slightly. "So then, you two—"

"Have a much sweeter thing." Karin grins; digging into Momo's freshly baked apple pie with relish. "I wouldn't do that anyway. It's really not something I'd like to be talented at."

"Huh. I guess you're right." Momo considers it, and then agrees. "It sounded nice in theory, I guess. It's kind of scary, now that I think about it…"

"Please just go away." Toushirou interrupts their picnic, head hung low as he digs deeper holes into the ground, trying to attend to his vegetables. "I want to _work._"

His only response is their laughter, floating like birds into the sunny horizon.

* * *

Karin leaves her marks, her magics, everywhere, it feels. Or maybe Toushirou gets accustomed to it, and it changes how he perceives the town. It's a sensation that he begins to recognize, a faint flicker like her fingertips scuttling up his spine, her kiss an imprint in glass, a twist of a grin always nearby. Even when she's nowhere in sight.

It's not bad, Toushirou thinks, as he adjusts to walking into his slowly growing garden, and doesn't shiver any more now that the buds of flowers turn to him, or when he touches chalk marks left on the wall: sometimes a message is formed in the shape of pictures, other times, it's the shadowy shape of capybara, trotting around him in circles, nudging his feet and snuffling his shoes, or something else entirely, like a dragon from his imagination that he once confided in her. Something meant to amuse him.

It's not bad at all, just different.

* * *

Except nothing's different. Not really.

There's a witch in this sleepy little village now that goes by the name of Karin, but nothing has changed since she's arrived.

Well. He's happier these days.

There is that.

* * *

It's through Matsumoto that Toushirou learns that her pet cat Yoruichi has given birth to kittens. There are several of them, adorable fluffy things, purring and sleeping and curled up into balls.

One of them is a fabled witch's cat. Pretty black fur and yellow eyes. With the caveat of having one white mitten.

"Nothing's perfect." Matsumoto smiles, shaking his white paw all the same. "But it'll do."

It's imperfectly perfect.

"He'll do just fine." He smiles back. Just enough facial muscles to be recognized as a soft smile. The kitten is warm and fuzzy in his hands, and so tiny. Tinier than he's ever been, Toushirou is sure. With luck, he'll be a proper witch's cat. Knowing Karin, he probably won't. But that's okay too. "I think I'll call him Hyourinmaru."

Hyourinmaru, Karin tells him later, making the cat float and then spends the evening watching the kitten mewl and summersault as they have dinner that night, is an excellent name.

* * *

She does, to Toushirou's delight, make a promise that she will teach Hyourinmaru how to swim.

* * *

"C'mere." Karin says, taking hold of his hand, fingers lacing with his, "I promised you a rainbow, didn't I?"

"I wanted rain." Toushirou states, dry as the sun is bright, and there, clear to see, is a rainbow above them, and there's that _feeling_ again, warm in his chest and unmistakably _Karin_.

"Promises, promises." Karin grins carelessly, pulling him forward, broom and Hyourinmaru in tow. "I promised you a flying lesson."

"So you did." Toushirou nods, and lets her lead him into the rainbow sky.

* * *

And predictably, into a tree.


End file.
